Elon Musk has given his remaining staff until Thursday at 17:00 EST to commit to working “long hours at high intensity,” or leave with three months severance pay.
They must agree to the terms set out in the email, which also conveys that the upcoming work at “the new Twitter” will be “extremely hardcore.”
The email read: “Going forward, to build a breakthrough Twitter 2.0 and succeed in an increasingly competitive world, we will need to be extremely hardcore. This will mean working long hours at high intensity. Only exceptional performance will constitute a passing grade.”
This deadline comes after a significant slashing of jobs at Twitter, where 50 percent of the company lost their jobs.
According to Elon Musk, he had “no choice.” The reason he cited was the fact Twitter was losing £3.51m a day.
Jessica Brannigan, lead people scientist, Culture Amp says:
“Twitter under Musk seems to be promising very long hours, which must be worked in the office (and not remotely), with half of the number of colleagues they used to have.
“What is being offered to Twitter employees to stay? And why isn’t this a question that Twitter is asking itself?
“There seems to be so much emphasis on what there will not be – time, autonomy, lunch – but very little about what they will get from staying there.
“Having employees commit to their company is important, especially during tough times. But asking current employees to sign away their lives to ‘extremely hardcore’ work for the foreseeable certainly seems like an Employee Value Proposition in reverse.
“Most companies in the uber-talent-hungry tech sector look to bolster the offerings for their employees, making them increasingly attractive places to work.
“The latest missive states that ‘Only exceptional performance will constitute a passing grade’ which at first glance can sound aspirational, but there are two concerning things with this.
“First – we know from our latest research at Culture Amp that the majority of those in highest performance brackets don’t retain that status when performance reviews next take place; that’s because working at peak performance is hard; it’s not realistic over time for most.
“Second; most businesses realistically need a robust grounding of good performers who will stay with the business and deliver good work, not geniuses who come in and out in the blink of an eye.”
Amelia Brand is the Editor for HRreview, and host of the HR in Review podcast series. With a Master’s degree in Legal and Political Theory, her particular interests within HR include employment law, DE&I, and wellbeing within the workplace. Prior to working with HRreview, Amelia was Sub-Editor of a magazine, and Editor of the Environmental Justice Project at University College London, writing and overseeing articles into UCL’s weekly newsletter. Her previous academic work has focused on philosophy, politics and law, with a special focus on how artificial intelligence will feature in the future.